Message to smokers from Keep Britain Tidy
Wednesday, December 16, 2009 Natasha Piscitelli, marketing co-ordinator for Keep Britain Tidy, has written to me as follows:
Dear Simon,
Keep Britain Tidy has recently released an online film highlighting the problem of smoking litter. As an organisation which regularly communicates with the smoking community, we’re looking for your support to help us to spread our message.
The 40 second film can be viewed on the Keep Britain Tidy website: www.keepbritaintidy.org/news/bigcig.aspx
It depicts Londoners battling through the capital against a sea of giant cigarette butts, and concludes with footage of the Thames filled with giant cigarette ends and the strapline ‘it’s no small problem’.
We would be grateful if you would help us to promote the film, for example by publishing it on your website or forwarding it on to anyone you think may be interested.
As well as showcasing the film on the Keep Britain Tidy website, we have featured it on video sharing network YouTube and are promoting it through our social networking channels Facebook and Twitter.
To coincide with the film’s release, we have issued a media statement urging the cigarette industry to educate smokers on the impact of cigarette litter and to shoulder more responsibility for the problem.
If you would like to publish the film to your website, please contact me and I will supply you with the code required. Or please get in touch if you have any other ways you can help us to promote the film.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Look at the video and let me know what you think. I shall attach your responses to my reply.
Now, back to the real world (where we're not all drowning in an ocean of cigarette-generated filth) ...
Simon Clark
Ginette Unsworth of Keep Britain Tidy has posted a comment in response to some of the comments on this post. She writes:
As the Marketing & Communications Manager of Keep Britain Tidy, I want to clarify that we did not fund the production of this advert but were merely sent it by a producer who produced it for his portfolio. In all of our advertising to reduce cigarette butts we have tried to ensure not to alienate smokers but just encourage them to use a personal ashtray or put it in the bin. Our research shows that many smokers believe that butts are not litter, and when sent this advert we believed this would go some way to helping raise awareness of the issue.
You will see from our website that we run campaigns on all litter issues, not just smoking litter, and all we are trying to achieve is a cleaner country. We sent this advert to Forest to inform them of the film and we are in no way making any comment on people's right to smoke! This is not a personal attack on smokers and I am disappointed that this has now become a personal attack on one of my colleagues. We do welcome your views but please don't make them so personal and if you want to get in touch further please email us at enquiries@keepbritaintidy.org
Note: I agree with her that we should not make personal attacks on individual employees. That was not the intention of my original post.
Reader Comments (74)
lets go back to having ashtrays in pubs? i might go to one then. I put my butts in the bin at home whilst drinking some sensibly priced bitter from the supermarket.And i recycle the cans.lol stupid society! I have smoke detectors too b4 u say thats bad!
Mark & Martin V. I nearly choked on my breakfast after reading your comments. Ha.
Anyway its obvious from our response to the nonsense we have upset someone. GOOD !!
Yes that will be a great thing to keep london or UK clean... so why not pushing the state to put back BIN in the street as there are in all the city in Europe.It is just commun sens! My hand bag is NOT made to be a bin .... and thinking about men trouser pocket or coat pocket were never made to put garbge in lol. Don't you think? Stop with the smoker we are not "a la tete de tous les mots"
Thanks
What a stupid and unrealistic advert... the pub featured in it was still open for business!
Seriously though, I know it's fashionable to pick on smokers at the moment, but how about picking someone else for a change eh? Off the top of my head; how about people who don't pick up their dog's leavings?
If you want to reduce cigarette litter, get more cigarette bins out there, and berate every council that denies planning permission to any business who wanted to mount one outside their premises.
Goverment donation to Keep Britain Tidy in 2008 accounts = £4,30,000 (reduced from 2007 !!!!).
Sightsavers International could provide cataract operations for 185,200 3rd World childern.
Do we get a choice between more unwanted, doomed to failure, NuLabour Social Engineering or something humanitarian and worthwhile.
The Keep Britain tidy brigade and Natasha and Ginette better grasp the plain fact that smokers are never going to give up the simple pleasure of smoking a cigarette.
Because the benefits, dear zealots, far outweigh the risks.
Like keeping us immune from infections and allergies that seem to plague the worried well and from bugs in your unhygienic hospitals - who but a smoker will brave the elements after an operation or procedure and blow all the bugs away in the fresh air while also helping themselves to get mobile quicker.
And thats only one example, I could go on.
What you and your ilk would want to do is start making a vido on the sense of letting smokers back indoors.
Thats all we smokers want and your litter 'problem' would be solved in one sweep.
All it would take is to revert the brainwashing process that was so masterfully achieved by the anti smoking brigade, and of course, a good PR guru.
Also, if you followed the good example of our more civilised continental cousins and allowed indoor smoking areas, you could save yourselves a lot of grief and worry about butt problems, while saving the taxpayer a fortune.
You never know, people might even begin to like you!
I don't know what this bint is complaining about. I for one never called them a bunch of meddlesome tossers and wanqueurs. No. Not me.
Actually I found it amusing, a perfect illustration of the disproportionate view the anti-smoking brigade take to cigarettes and smokers.
Perhaps if they plan a 'Keep Britain Tidy' campaign they could run identical ads showing the bottles and beer cans I picked up in my son's infant school playground this morning, or the McDonalds packaging that filled 3 carrier bags shoved down my neighbours garden bushes, or even the dog muck we have to dodge during a 10 minute walk to the school and we live in what is reckoned to be an up market area.
Perspective is all people!
Simon, in view of your silence I give up on this site.
"Our research shows that many smokers believe that butts are not litter..."
Ginette, If you are still reading this, that is a very good point. I have to admit that, if in a place where there is no other place to dispose of it, I would not feel terribly naughty stubbing a cigarette out on the ground. If I had eaten a pork pie, I would screw the wrapping up and place it in my pocket until I found a bin. If it was a messy bacon butty container, even then I would look for a bin.
At this point, I would like to mention the shopping precinct in Sale. All areas where people are likely to stop for a rest in their retail therapy are fully equipped with state of the art waste disposal facilities, bins and outdoor ashtrays which also include a large hole which says 'GUM'.
As a little aside, for the benefit of Peter Thurgood, Sale is in Trafford, a Tory Council!
PS In the City of Manchester, the Palace Theatre, which holds 2,500 patrons, has no outdoor ashtrays, not even a bin within a reasonable distance.
(No Peter, I am not going there!)
NORMAN said: Simon, in view of your silence I give up on this site.
Why won't you answer the poor man Simon, he is only asking you a simple question, and it is bad manners to ignore people.
Simon only answers his chums!
If you're not in his circle then tough.
Your right there Tom, he answered an old mate straight away on the Mandleson thread.
Come on Simon don't treat posters like 2nd rate people, thats what the antis do!
Let people go back to smoking indoors, where they can properly discard cigarette ends and that will greatly reduce the problem. Has Keep Britain Tidy signed on to petitions to amend the smoking ban?
New slogan... get butts off the streets and back into the pubs where they belong!
Bet tose hypocrits have not Chris!
type error- meant to say those.
I am ashamed - but sadly not surprised - at some of the personal attacks against the promoters of the Keep Britain Tidy campaign.
The comments help to give the impression that smokers are a bunch of aggressively self obsessed and inconsiderate boors. And some are.
I am a smoker and I am amazed at how many fellow smokers do not regard cigarette butts as litter. They seem to think that because they are now 'victims' of a ban they are entitled to behave like petulant children. Grow up, don't throw butts on the street, take advice when it is well intentioned and be considerate.
Nigel Walker This is not about being considerate! Were the anti-smoking crusaders 'considerate' when they duped ill-informed politicians into bringing in extreme smoking bans,purposely leading to the so called problems of litter, resulting in yet another reason to demonise smokers?
As for 'well intentioned', this whole episode ia about the vilification of smokers, otherwise why would they ignore the very easy solutions to the litter problem. Were we knee deep in fag-ends 40 years ago, when 70% of the population smoked? I think not. Don't be naive.
Yes another saga in the Witch Hunt of the smoker.When Non Smokers realise this idiots like Natasha Piscitelli will soon be out of job!
Why does simon not answer the questions in the posts..makes me wonder which side simon is really on..his own or ours..makes me think about all those crooked mps..and which side they were on,,and yes now we know...their own.
I fully support the idea that smokers should be responsible with their litter--as should everybody. However, lately, smokers have been cut out of the social contract--we don't count, except as entities to tax and punish. So lots of smokers womder why they, as second-class citizens--should care.
A certain Austrian bloke with a funny moustache said, "The art of leadership... consists in consolidating the attention of the people against a single adversary and taking care that nothing will split up that attention."
Ignore the broken bottles, dogshit, chewing gum, drinkers' vomit, fast food containers, fly-tipping, used condoms and junkies' syringes!
Good advert - although i do cringe at how much the government spends to educate the dumb masses of this country.
However, as the advert has now been made it raises a important point - Stop dropping Fag Butts! This video isn't an attack against smokers its just asking smokers to stop dropping litter!